The Memory Garden

by Mary Rickert

  “You don’t understand,” Bay says. “I’m going to bed.”

  “Bed?” Nan squints at the stove-top clock, too small to read from where she sits, though clearly it’s not even dark out. “What’s wrong with you?”

  “I’m tired, okay? We were up late, and I’m tired, and I almost died, even if you don’t care, and…” Bay breaks off midsentence, turning so swiftly to run up the stairs that Nan is sprayed with a few drops of river water.

  Nan sighs at the sound of the bedroom door slamming shut. Of course Bay doesn’t understand. She doesn’t know she was born with a caul, and she doesn’t know that because of this fortune, she has no need to fear drowning. She doesn’t know because Nan never told her, though even if Bay were not in possession of her particular talent, Nan thinks it unlikely there was any real danger. Why, Bay herself said everyone was there, which of course is an exaggeration, but how many people does it take to pull a girl out of the tangle of duckweed?

  Unless…Nan is momentarily frozen, paused in the middle of a thought she does not want to complete, holding a breath she does not want to let go. Unless…unless it wasn’t duckweed after all.

  “How horrible are you?” Nan hisses. “Leave her out of it.”

  She immediately realizes her mistake. The plea serves her ghosts more than herself. After all, what is the point of revenge but to hurt her most completely, and what could do that more than by hurting Bay? Nan shakes her head but doesn’t speak further. What does she know about such matters? She’s just an old woman with secrets, and one is this: Nan is almost powerless. Maybe once she could have been something, before she became a woman afraid of making the wrong choice. Whatever powers Nan had have been quite depleted, her strength reduced to whimsy: a shoe garden, a walnut-leaf wreath, a basic understanding of herbs and cycles, garden magic, a sensitive nose. Possibly (Nan can’t be sure) enough store of untapped potential to keep the sheriff away long enough to get her affairs in order.

  Nan walks slowly up the stairs, trying to still the thumping in her head. Can everything be happening at once? Apparently, yes. And as so often happens when Nan considers time’s diminishing supply, her thoughts turn to Eve. She remembers Eve’s fingers reaching out to seek purchase where there was none, the gentle snowfall, large white flakes drifting onto the cracked sidewalks. Nan places her hands over her heart. “You need to get a hold of yourself,” she whispers in the dim, warm space, and her mind makes a leap, the way it’s been doing lately, to Bay standing in the kitchen, blushing when she said the boy’s name; her rescuer, her prince.

  Nan snorts as she shuffles into her bedroom, which smells quite strongly of lavender. She opens the top dresser drawer, pushing aside cotton underwear and socks, until her fingers brush the narrow box, which she lifts with a flutter of blue silk scarf she doesn’t remember owning. She considers the box for a moment with its cover of floral script and watercolor posies, then wraps the scarf around her neck. It’s a comfort as she walks to Bay’s room.

  ***

  When Bay was a little kid, her Nana used to take her to the river. Not as often as Bay would have liked; she would have gone every day once she discovered the wild world there—the dangerous bloodroot, buttercups (which Bay never tired of holding under her Nana’s chin to see if she liked butter) and all that green: the grass, the leafy trees, the weeping willows with their long branches draped like hair. Her Nana called them “the three old women.” Even now Bay thinks of them that way, as old women standing at the banks of the river, watching over her.

  That’s what she used to think, at least.

  Bay lies on her bed beneath the slanted ceiling, remembering floating on her back, looking up at the green sky. Of course it’s not really green, but she always thinks of it that way when she’s there, staring up through the overhanging branches, her ears half in the water, muffling all noise except the sound of her own breath. Bay closes her eyes, trying to pretend she is floating, and she almost is, when the knock brings her back to her room with the low ceiling, the lumpy mattress, the clammy feel of the suit she still wears beneath her clothes.

  “Not now,” Bay says, but she doesn’t say it loudly, because actually, she’s not sure. Lately she feels torn like this, like she wants her Nana to come and she wants her to go and Bay can’t decide which she wants more.

  It doesn’t matter. Nan shuffles into the room for some reason wearing a scarf draped around her neck even though it’s the middle of summer.

  “I’m taking a nap,” Bay says.

  “There’s something I haven’t told you.”

  Bay pushes onto her elbows to sit up.

  “You have an inheritance.”

  She knew it! Didn’t she know it? Didn’t she know there was some wonderful secret to her life?

  “Not money, dear.” Nan laughs. “Something more precious.”

  Who said anything about money? Bay reaches out to take the long, thin box. What can it be? What can it mean? She holds it gently, as though it were not made of cardboard, but glass, reading the swirled pink letters: “Rosewater Handkerchiefs.” This better not be one of her Nana’s jokes.

  “Before you open it, I should explain. Remember how I said you were left on the porch in a box draped with lace?”

  “To keep the mosquitoes off me.”

  “It wasn’t lace.”

  Bay used to like the story, the way her Nana told it, of finding her on the porch “like something delivered by the moon.” When Bay was young, she imagined the moon sinking through the night sky to bring her home, though now she knows it’s just a stupid story. She glances up at her Nana, her gray hair like a hornet’s nest around her face.

  “Go ahead, open it.”

  Bay removes the lid, for a moment disappointed by the pink tissue; the excitement returns as she parts the soft paper. What can it be? What is it? she thinks, lifting from its nest some kind of animal-skin balloon, an ugly, flattened thing.

  Bay once went through a very short period of eating dirt. Who knows why? Little kids do things like that. But the feeling she has now, looking at this ugly thing, is as though she just swallowed a pile of dirt. It sits in her gut like mud.

  “Careful,” her Nana says, “it’s fragile. You mustn’t tear it. That would change everything.”

  Bay holds it up in front of her face, pretending to inspect it as a way to hide her disappointment. She peers through the dried, fleshy mess at her Nana, who is blurred, like someone reflected in water. With a shudder, Bay lets it fall back to the box, flooded by the memory of being pulled under, as though the river intended to keep her.

  “Bay, I told you to be careful. You can’t just go tossing it around like that. If it gets torn, your whole life will be different. I know it doesn’t look like much now, but the morning you arrived, it was quite lovely. I knew right away what it was.”

  Bay can’t decide if she wants to roll her eyes or throw the weird thing across the room. She tosses the box toward the foot of the bed, which causes her Nana to gasp and lunge as though it were explosive.

  “Aren’t you listening? Am I speaking Urdu? This isn’t something to be careless with. This is your life. You need to understand. This is important. No matter what happens, you are going to be all right.”

  Bay wishes she could start over, go back in time to this morning. She wishes she would have stayed home and finally learned how to make the lavender soap. In fact, Bay wishes she could go back to last night to make a different wish over her candles. She hadn’t thought it would really work. What had she been thinking? Why wish for the future? It always comes, and here she is, about a million times sadder than just a day ago.

  “Are you listening? Have you heard anything I said?”

  Bay nods, though why, she has no idea. Her Nana always knows when she is lying.

  “It’s called a caul, Bay, and you were born wrapped with it around your head and face. I assume.
Well, with recent developments, I’m actually quite certain.”

  “A cowl?”

  “Caul, a caul. C-A-U-L. I don’t know if she, your birth mother that is, knew what it was. I’ve always wondered if she did. It’s nothing to be afraid of; in fact, it’s quite a good thing.”

  “I don’t understand,” Bay says, though she thinks she might. It’s too terrible to consider, really. All this time she’s had this secret place to go to in her mind, the solace of believing her birth mother is normal. It never even occurred to Bay that her birth mother could be weirder than Nan. Bay realizes this has been incredibly stupid. After all, what normal person leaves a baby in a box on a stranger’s porch?

  “To be born with a caul is extremely fortunate. The person born with a caul has no fear of drowning.”

  “You don’t think—”

  “Wait, Bay. Let me finish. You can’t drown. It’s impossible. You didn’t need some boy to save your life.”

  Bay can’t believe this is happening. Her Nana stands there, petting that scarf, looking like she’s just presented Bay with something wonderful.

  “Also, you are possessed of a talent for predicting weather, which, Bay, I’m sure you’ve observed, you do have a flair for.”

  Bay remembers the way Mrs. Nellers, her kindergarten teacher, looked at her as though she’d wet her pants, which she had not, when she said she smelled lightning. Thalia always asks if she’ll need a sweater or umbrella, or if they’ll have a snow day or not. Even Mrs. Desarti recently pulled out her iPad to check possible dates for her niece’s outdoor wedding next summer. Bay just shook her head and said she had no idea what the weather would be in a year. It’s not like she can tell the future. So what if she can look at a blue sky and know a storm’s approaching? So what if she can smell snow before it falls, and so what if she didn’t drown?

  Well, not so what about that, but is she really supposed to believe that this ugly thing, this caul, is what saved her, when it was actually Wade Enders?

  “You also have a talent for healing.”

  Is this it? Bay thinks. Is this the great secret of my life, an ugly thing kept in an old handkerchief box? Is my Nana really nuts?

  “All talent comes with challenges, Bay, but at times like this, you will find yourself held up by your talents. Not everyone is so fortunate. If something should happen, I’m not saying it will, but if it did, you have all you need to survive.”

  “I don’t want to be a doctor.”

  “Who said anything about being a doctor? Oh, you mean the gift for healing? You don’t have to be a doctor, Bay. There are many ways to heal. You can choose how you want to do it. These are gifts, not burdens.”

  “I’m going to be a chef. Maybe a lawyer. I haven’t decided.”

  “Of course!” Nan says. “Be a lawyer, if that’s what you want, though I can’t imagine why you would. Or a chef. Heal with cakes! I, personally, have often found cake to be quite healing.”

  “Heal with cakes?” Bay says, not wanting to admit she sort of likes the idea. She can’t take any of this seriously. Obviously her Nana is, well, maybe not nuts, but not realistic, that’s for sure, even if some of her strange ideas do work. That stupid wreath she wears, for instance. Bay refuses to wear one, but she has noticed the way flies pass over Nan in the garden, and flies don’t pass over anything. Bay herself has enjoyed the benefits of cramp bark, which provides her with relief during her period when nothing else does, and she enjoys the way they celebrate birthdays, lighting the tea candles and not blowing them out, but this is too much. Her Nana stands there with her head slightly tilted in that way she has, as if the world can be made to look right only at a slant. What am I, Bay thinks, some kind of freak? “Maybe I don’t want to heal with cake.”

  Nan sighs. “Bay, you don’t have to heal with cakes. It’s a talent. The healing, I mean. You don’t have to do anything with your talents at all, though believe me, it doesn’t make things easier. All talent comes with challenges. All life does.”

  “I get to choose?”

  “You get to choose what you do with your talents. You do not get to choose what those talents are.”

  While Bay’s been sitting on her bed, pretending everything is normal, the dark mass of disappointment in her gut has started to quiver in a terrible way, as though wasps have begun building a nest there, though of course they haven’t. It’s just an expression. It’s not reality.

  I almost died today, Bay thinks, shaking her head at her Nana. The wasps build so fast, so furiously, Bay is storming out of the room before she even makes up her mind to do so.

  “Bay, wait, there’s more.”

  More? Bay runs down the stairs, through the kitchen, and out the back door, into the lavender dusk.

  ***

  Nan calls it the blue hour, this time in a summer day when the sky seems to fall, casting everything in its net. She looks at the yard below, watching Bay run to the small clearing behind the lilacs and pampas grass. The trail to Bay’s special place was once so well-traveled there was a path leading to it. Nan used to leave little presents: a pretty stone, seashells, a marigold, a child’s shoe. Occasionally, Bay found things Nan had no memory of leaving—a ribbon, a button, a scrap of lace.

  Nan gasps at the painful realization. “Also, you will see ghosts,” she whispers. How can she have been looking so carefully and not seen what was happening right before her eyes? Do other people see clearly? Somehow, Nan must explain everything. Where will she find the courage to do so?

  There have been many moments, over the years, when Nan has thought of calling Mavis and Ruthie, and each time she came to the conclusion it wasn’t necessary. That first morning, fifteen years ago, when she opened her door and found a baby there, she vacillated between wanting to call and hoping they would not hear the sensational news. Nan worried about it quite a bit, actually, until she became preoccupied with feedings and diaper changing, all the burdens of being a new mother at an age when most women were enjoying the freedom of grandparenting. More than once Nan thought of calling for advice, solace, celebration, friendship, especially after the trouble with that boy, but then she’d remind herself of the secret they shared, as dangerous as the Ithyphallus impudicus she’d rooted out of a crack at the side of the house, the nasty fungus said to portend death, and quickly decided that one secret was enough between friends whose friendship had not survived it.

  Nan clutches the box against her chest. The hallway is too warm, the way it gets in summer. She feels a little woozy, suddenly realizing she has only had wine for dinner. She decides to make chicken sandwiches. She and Bay can eat on the porch, sitting in the rockers, watching the fireflies.

  She shuffles into her room, trying not to be distracted by the fluid nature of space after wine on an empty stomach. Pulling the stubbornly resistant dresser drawer, she almost drops the box, which gives her an idea. She could take care of Bay’s trouble (and some of her own) by executing one great tear. Rip up the caul, and Bay will be in no danger of ever hearing the accusations of ghosts. Is that too much to ask? That Bay not suffer Nan’s consequences? Isn’t it enough already, the things people say, and the things they will say when Sheriff Henry arrests Nan for murder? She shivers at the terrible word. With a resolute tug, the drawer finally opens, and Nan returns the box to its usual spot. It wouldn’t be right to interfere in Bay’s life on such a profound level. Truth be told, Nan sadly admits, her attraction to the solution might have been mostly for her own benefit. Nan enjoys the glide of silk as she pulls the scarf off to drop it into the drawer, which closes so easily, she entertains the fleeting idea that the dresser has blessed her choice.

  Nan walks slowly down the back stairs into the kitchen, thinking how she needs help. A little wine would be a good start, or maybe just a diversion. Eyeing with disappointment the empty bottle, she sits before the computer. Is she trembling? Yes, she is. What if this is the wrong
thing to do? What if she is seeing this all wrong now?

  They are well past the Facebook generation, and women of Nan’s age changed their last names when they married, but she quickly finds Mavis. At least Nan thinks it’s her. There is a woman in Arizona selling antiques, but when Nan clicks on the bio page, she thinks for a moment she’s mistaken.

  Of course, even Mavis has aged, her once-beautiful dark hair now dyed a frightening black, but it’s her, all right, her lips bright red with her signature lipstick. Though she is no longer beautiful in the traditional sense of the word, Mavis still looks like someone who doesn’t mind causing trouble. It is almost enough to make Nan reconsider. At the bottom of the page there is contact information, an email address, a post box, and, incredibly, a good old-fashioned phone number. Nan calls before she loses her courage.

  “Hello?”

  She would recognize that voice anywhere; they used to call it a smoker’s voice, deep and throaty.

  “Nan?”

  She considers hanging up, but instead finds herself nodding into the telephone, feeling, much to her surprise, happy. “How did you know?”

  Mavis cackles. “Caller ID.”

  “Oh.”

  “What? You think I have some kind of superpower?”

  Nan isn’t sure how to respond. It is her hope that Mavis has retained some of the power of her youth.

  “It’s been more than sixty years.”

  “Oh? Has it been that long?”

  “Cut the crap, Nan. You keep this up, I’ll be dead before you get to the point.”

  “I have a daughter.”

  “You said you never would.”

  “She just turned fifteen.”

  “What? That’s the age of my grandchildren.”

  “Oh, you know me, I always was ponderous.” Mavis cackles, and Nan closes her eyes. The headache has returned with a vengeance. She can’t believe she’s doing this. She swore she’d never speak to Mavis again. “We’re getting old.”